L.A. Concert Calendar: March 6 – 12

Visit our concert calendar for a full show list, links to buy tickets and our picks.

Pick of the Week: Neko Case @ Amoeba
She told major record labels to fuck off because they wouldn’t offer her enough control of her music, was voted the “Sexiest Babe of Indie Rock” in a Playboy poll (link ~NSFW) and plays a free show Wednesday at Amoeba. How can you not love Neko?

Hello Weipengchen!
We would be delighed to give you the names of a few bands that are similar to Sigur Ros and Mew. I am assuming you mean have a similar sound to those artists– that dense, atmospheric, miasmic textured bringdown-then-uplift meditative otherworldly post-rock rock. Some contemporary bands that spring to mind are: Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You Black Emperor (see Constellation Record label, in general), and possibly Low (Pete?). Several defunct “shoegazer” bands of the 1990’s that operated in this mode–Slowdive, Pale Saints, Chapterhouse and the like–are well worth checking out today; those records were surprisingly innovative for their day. Those bands were in turn hugely influenced by late My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins, so you should be familiar with their material. Historically, while this sound probably has its origins in the early 70’s solo work of Brian Eno, especially “Here Come The Warm Jets,” early demos of “Tomorrow Never Knows” show the Beatles might have in fact anticipated this blissful sound, so the Beatles Anthology Vol. 2 is recommended. Hope that answers your question! Happy record shopping!

Just letting people know Afurirampo is amazing live. I just saw them in Tokyo and did a podcast
interview with them after the show.
You can find it herehttp://friends-world.org/afrye/
Just letting you know.
Ayme Frye

I did my B.A. in Eastern Prog Rock (minor in Kraftwerk) at Brown; M.A. at Columbia (thesis: David Bowie’s Berlin Period) and, most recently, completed a Ph.D. in U.K. Postpunk Ethics.

It’s complicated. I will try to explain what my colleages and I have found. Imagine if you will a 3D spectograph wherein the X-axis is rhythm, the Y-axis is melody and the Z-axis is a composite variable “wildcard” containing weighted aspects of vocal tonality, lyrical content, visual imagery, and average amount of eyeliner of female fans. The 0 point represents a constant tone of pink noise. As as a song is played, the spectograph will record peaks and attack times of rhythmic elements as well as vocal melody. The Z axes values will be input manually and randomly distributed across playback of all 12 tracks.

I should note here that we formulated a “baseline” Interpol sound, which was built using the average of “Say Hello To the Angels” and “NYC” as extremes of the uptempo/lowtempo scale. We determined that plucked eighth notes of minor thirds in the higher registers were the dominant lead guitar component 76% of the time, a chorusing/reverbered effect employed more or less always, while 2 note power chords were the singer’s primary mode on the guitar. Bass guitar was found to be primarily a plucked sound of chromatic scales, synced with the “off beat” hi hat work, for what is known as Algers’s Disco Rock Effect. (see: Algers DF. “Convergence of uptempo disco rhthyms with guitar-based rock.” Journal of NYC Independent Rock. 2000;3:19-37.) Vocals were equality divided between a shortened stacatto phrase length of 8ths, mixed with a drawn out “moaning” quality.

I should note here that the vocalists do differ in terms of tonality, but in our composite variable, voice was weighted equally with lyrical content and visual imagery, so this might be why it is difficult to accept the comparison on a cursory listen. A Stills song such as “Yesterday Never Tomorrows,” for example, scores a 7.8 on the Interpol scale; “Gender Bombs” came in at 6.7. We rated anything above a “6” as a primarily Interpol-based composition. (As a comparison, Elefant’s “Misfit” came in at 8.9 and She Wants Revenge’s “Tear You Apart” scored a 9.8) I can send you a copy of our abstract, if you like.